


The Mirror Rat

by Allegory



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bad Dreams, Cutting, Divorced parents, Eating Disorders, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attack, Psalms, Sad, Self-Harm, Swimming, bereavement, dead grandpa, headcanons, in the form of a white cat, self injury, trigger warning, victor knows what to do for once, well shit, yuri!! on Ice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8555443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: Yurio feeds the cat with scraps of his takeaway chicken one day. The cat hisses at him and Yurio scowls back. They’re really getting along.





	1. Chapter 1

Yuri bleeds anger through his lips, sadness through his wrists.

He is twelve this year. The dirge plays on loop and the winter air whirls around him, seeping through his pores into every bone and sinew. It is so, so unnaturally cold that Yuri can almost feel the vestige of his snot and tears freezing. The next time he steps on the rink his fingers go numb and he remembers this moment, the barren field and red bouquets of a foreign land, a place that is warm and happy far away. But this is a long time after.

_Koliva._

Yuri is the youngest on the table to taste this honey-coated wheat. The atmosphere that looms above them presses down, gently at first, then as the seconds pass Yuri’s tongue grows numb from the saccharine custom and he is suffocating, sucking wheat through his nose. They fill his lungs like a paddy field. His grandfather had brought him, once, to the countryside where the labyrinth of green seafoam unfurled before him.

There are only two people in the room. This is now the size of the Plisetsky family.

Yuri brings with him the Book of Psalms everywhere he drifts. He’s never been one for practice and with news of the Plisetsky’s recent loss, his coach has shaken off all insistence. Yuri spends the long days curled up in the corner bathroom stall, muttering verses from the book. When everyone leaves he presses his fingers against the ceiling-to-floor windows and puffs, condensing the glass. Yuri sees his reflection; a drenched rat, grimy and starved. His hair has somehow paled, sunflower blonde to a shade he doesn’t wish to describe, a shade that reminds him only of his grandfather’s skin before they shoved him in

One night Yuri comes home to see a cage placed behind the front door. He bends down, unlocks the cage and a creature pounces out. Immediately Yuri feels the edges blaze across his arms and he fights to get away. A white cat. It flicks its tail and, upon disengaging from him flesh, stalks off. Inside the cage is a message scrawled by his mother, but Yuri never finds out what’s written.

There are bandages in the kitchen. Somewhere.

He doesn’t even know why he bothers. Mom is terminally gone from the house, and Yuri suspects this is a good thing because if she were home he would never be able to sleep through her sobs. He slides his palms across the top cupboards and finds a first aid kid. Yuri carries it upstairs to his room and begins tending to his arms. He runs the faucet over them and his body jumps to life. He jolts away but the euphoria stays with him, wraps him in a cowl and whispers that everything will piece itself together. All he has to do is hide under the cowl.

Yuri feeds the cat with scraps of his takeaway chicken one day. The cat hisses at him and Yuri scowls back. They’re really getting along.

Victor comes into Yuri’s life a month later. At this point Yuri has put together a couple bits and pieces of himself. He’s on the rink again, swirling away. It takes his mind off other things. It also helps that Victor is an infuriating co-coach who forgets all his promises. One day Victor approaches him at the locker room while Yuri is fumbling through his bag. Two white bands are taped across his wrists. They talk about nationals and Yuri realizes only three quarters through their conversation that Victor’s eyes are glued to his wrists.

They’re at a beach one day. It’s spring now, cool air nuzzling their cheeks. Victor puts an arm over Yuri’s shoulders and asks softly if Yuri is all right. Yuri’s body coils like a poked centipede. The question is as obvious as the answer. But Yuri pushes his bands back and shows him that, yes, on the clear canvas of his wrists, he's faring well.

Yuri gets home by bus that day and when he enters the shower, he stops to gaze at himself in the mirror. There’s something hollow about him that he’s not sure will ever diminish. Curls of red crawl, bright and livid across his stomach. Tens, hundreds. He runs his fingers down his chest, to his navel, and utters a verse from the Book of Psalms. The taste of honey lingers at the back of his throat. Tonight he wretches unspeakable things.


	2. Chapter 2

Yuri decides to go for a swim today.

The weather’s fine for it. And that’s not a common thing to say when in his part of Russia, Northern and frigid as the people raised here. Summer brings with it a sort of hope that Yuri doesn’t want to believe in. He buries his toes in the sand and lets the cold-warm wind buffet him, caress the course strands of his hay-colored hair.

Alone is a sort of power easily misused. Too much and it drives a person crazy, too little and it swallows them entirely. Yuri has always kept it in balance, soaking his feet in the water, pulling back before it freezes him over. This follows from a careful study of life that he believes, at the raw age of thirteen, is a distinct accomplishment.

Yuri doesn’t have any swimming trunks. He waddles into the coming tides, the water licking his shins like Victor’s poodle does on occasions. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, sucking the world in through his nose, swallowing each breath. Certain things in this world are meant to be held onto, clutched with all of one’s might. Moments like these Yuri wishes he could keep in a jar and carry with him forever.  He dives into the waves and immediately loses feeling of his legs. The water is almost glacial but Yuri believes he can take it, that all the years from the day he first stepped on an ice rink to this day, being capable of performing a triple lutz with confident grace, makes him immune to the elements of nature. At least the cold he was born from, born to.

When he comes up to the surface, bobbing with the waves, he wonders briefly how it would be if his body failed him now, spasming, unable to keep him afloat. The smallest twinge of panic strikes him and he recognizes how well he’s improved the past few months. His taste for fruits and cucumbers are recuperating and fewer bags of potato chips are littering his room. Training has been better too; more focused, less fixation on the world outside the windows. Like pieces of ripped fabric threaded back together, or scabs over peeled skin, Yuri acknowledges this epiphany with distinct wariness.

Being a professional sportsman, his first instinct is to find the cause of this improvement. But none strike him as the major factor, the beacon in a sea of ridges. It’s all the little things; his new cat, the salvaging of his relationship with his mother, the chicken buns that Victor keeps dropping off at his house. Yuri dives back in the water and lets the wave push him back, close enough to shore that his soles brush against sand and there’s no longer concern that he’ll die out here, alone, unknown.

Yuri spends a few more minutes before the chill creeps into his spine and his brain says something along the lines of  _ fuck this _ . If nothing else, those chicken buns are worth living for. He drags himself out of the sea salt and heads over to a gnarled tree, under which sits his desolate sports bag. Yuri tosses a towel behind his neck and suckles from his bottle thirstily. He sees in the periphery of his vision a parked van and a family of four cozied up in their mittens and coats, gazing between him and the sea. Something black crawls into his heart, the remembrance of his grandfather and the nostalgia etched across his stomach. Yuri zips his bag, sprints away and sees himself in the eyes of the family, a grotesque monster dripping across the beach.

Several hours later Yuri is shivering on a train, tucked into a ball with his toes curled around the edge of his seat. His phone vibrates and he pulls it out, chin nuzzling against the towel around his neck.

_ [10.20a.m.] From: Mom  
_ _ Out with friends. Shashlik in the kitchen. See you tonight, love. _

Yuri taps his forehead against the screen. He wants to stop thinking of the Wednesday nights when grandpa comes in with plastic bags dangling from his arms like a Christmas tree, hauling dozens of pirozhki and vodka and Yuri’s favorite treat, slices of medovik. Fluffy and easy to sink his teeth in, crunchy with the sprinkle of nuts. The ones that his grandpa bought were a little too sour, but Yuri always loved it that way. Honeycakes. Yuri remembers the koliva and pales, burying his head between his knees.

Later, Yuri sits alone in the small apartment that is the Plisetsky home. The lights are off as usual, windows partially open in an attempt to cut down on family bills. Yuri’s coaching fees burden them enough. And they've never been much, but Yuri remembers a warmer home before his father turned tail and walked away on them. Not for another woman but for his career, an opportunity to work in Moscow for a big law firm. It was fame or the ring, plus a quirky toddler with the same faded blue eyes as his. Fame had won. Someday Yuri will stand on the podium with a gold medal around his neck and he’ll show his dad just what he’d given up, what a huge mistake it’d been.

Yuri finishes nibbling on the last wooden stick and stalks into his room, where his white cat hops off the bed to circle his feet. She's grown a lot since first arriving to the household, black tufts forming around her face and paws. Yuri bends down to scratch her neck but she steps back, glaring at him. Yuri rolls his eyes and is tempted to tug her ear- assert a little discipline- but decides it’s not worth explaining all the scrapes he’ll get.

The rest of the day passes as usual. Yuri skates under Yakov’s instruction and an occasional word from Victor. That night, when he drifts to sleep he dreams of his cat’s claws blooming out of his stomach, a hundred pairs of razor ends. Then his grandpa’s hollow skin, his eyes blurred like those of dead fish in the markets.  _ See this, Yuri, the blurred ones have been dead for a while now. Not fresh and they don’t taste good. _

He cries in his sleep. The cat wakes up and licks his cheeks, and in his dreams Yuri sees Victor rubbing the tears off his face with a pair of black gloves, but the tears never, ever end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> angst angst baby


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are still dark days.

Yuri

_ Yuri _

_ That’s my name, _ he thinks. Yuri continues to blink until his vision clears, and in front of him is the concerned face of his idol and co-coach Victor. Behind is Yakov’s stoic face, carved out of stone. But even his hard expression withers at the situation. Yuri feels hands scoop his limbs in all directions, shoulders and arms, and he struggles to push them away but none of his muscles or joints will cooperate.

A minute ago Yuri Plisetsky had been completing his warm-up, twisting midair in a triple axle when suddenly his upper body locked in place and his entire body slammed right against the frigid ice. This was not how skaters fell, and immediately all other activity on the rink ceased.

It hurts. His entire body feels like it’s on fire, but his fingers are frozen stiff.

Victor brushes everyone off and picks Yuri up gently, carrying him off the rink. He does this with his blades still on, riding the ice despite Yuri’s added weight, and puts him down against the wall. Someone brings him a thermal blanket. Yuri tries to get a grip on reality, scrambling to hold onto himself because his heart is about to explode in his chest and black spots are appearing in his eyes and he can’t breathe, he’s gagging for air and instead makes terrible noises that sound like wails of a dying animal.

Victor’s mouth is moving. Gently his fingers come under Yuri’s chin and shifts it up so that his vision is angled at the stadium’s ceiling. Air gushes into his lungs and it’s such a relief that he sputters, eyes fluttering, the black spots slowly but surely receding. Victor continues to hold his head up and Yuri pieces together his words.

_ Listen, you’re going to be safe. Deep breaths, come on. When I count to three. One, two… _

They breathe together. Yuri clings onto each _ three _ that Victor utters until his body stops shaking. He tries to move his fingers and they’re working again, slowly but surely. Victor continues murmuring words of encouragement, simple instructions that even a pup could comprehend. He gets up. When Yuri realizes Victor’s going to leave him his heart rate shoots up again and he clutches the older man’s sleeve.

“Don’t go, don’t go,” he whispers, at the brink of sobbing. He’s scared that the second Victor walks away the whole thing will happen again. The thought is enough to shorten his life expectancy.

Victor drops to the ground in front of him.  _ Okay _ , he says.  _ I’m not going anywhere. _

Victor instead directs someone else. Yakov arrives with a cup of water and some kind of sweet lemon candy that melts on Yuri’s tongue. One moment or forever after, Yuri’s mother joins them, hair sticking up like spaghetti around her face. She crouches down and bursts into tears even though Yuri feels better now, though he’s not sure if he wants to stand just yet. He doesn’t understand why his mom is being so emotional. It’s not like her to show so much feeling in front of him, much less to acquaintances like Victor and Yakov.

Yuri is later escorted to a cab. His mother never rides anything but the metro because it’s too expensive. Only then does the situation hit him- what she must’ve heard on the phone, that her only child can’t move and can’t speak and these were after all the things that had happened to Yuri’s grandpa before he passed away from myocardial arrest.

“Victor,” Yuri pleads. Yuri does not plead. “Come with.”

“Of course,” Victor answers in his soft voice, helping him in the cab. Yakov has too many students waiting inside for him and Yuri doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, in any case. But he texts Victor for updates throughout the ride.

The cab parks outside a hospital. Yuri is still a little shaken but at this point doesn’t think he’s ill enough to be seeing a physician. Victor shoots him a look and Yuri turns, taking his mother’s hand of guidance.

Victor and his mother do most of the talking when he’s admitted. The physician does standard tests on Yuri, things like his glucose level and temperature, and assures them of what Victor suspected had happened all along- a panic attack. A severe case, but not as life-threatening as a spinal cord injury or neuropathy, worse possibilities at the time.

This means only one thing. They wait in the midst of the busy hospital for his appointment with a therapist to be scheduled. Yuri won’t be there. Not mentally, at least, because his mother can force him to sit on a chair but she can’t make him say the things that have been stored away in the deepest recesses of his mind, decaying, infecting. There’s a mini garden located in the center of the hospital that Yuri wanders off to while his mother is using the toilet and Victor is crowded by a horde of admirers.

The garden is barely alive, mottled by the occasional shades of orange and green. Yuri has been around long enough to know that this is its peak condition. He sits on a creaky old bench and immerses himself in the silence to try and understand what exactly had happened to him, or rather why. He’d been doing so well. Was it the upcoming Nationals squeezing him dry? He couldn’t imagine. He knew he was well ahead of everyone else in his age group.

* * *

Someone comes to sit next to him a while later.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Yuri mutters, hands on either side of his head.

“You’re not.” He clings to Victor’s assurances like a safety net. “You’re tired, and stressed, and it’s reached a peak.”

Yuri turns to gaze at him. Victor’s good looks are ruffled and he looks older, wearier than usual. Yuri didn’t know this to be possible. “How did you know how to help me so well?”

Victor leans back against the iron bench, crossing his legs and making a show of tapping a finger against his chin. He stares longingly into the distance. “Who knows?”

“Victor.” One word is enough of an admonishment, especially in Yuri’s pained, cracked voice. Victor shrinks back slightly.

“I’ve had some experience with panic attacks,” he explains. “Before Yakov was my coach. Some things were going on in my life.”

Vague. With Victor, you can’t expect much more. Yuri straightens up and listens to his own heart. He’s so conscious of it now, fearing that at any moment it’ll start banging against his rib cage again. Victor places his hand on Yuri’s shoulder and pulls the younger blonde towards him. It’s such a slow motion that Yuri settles against him without stiffening at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic keeps getting updated post-midnight l ma o


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An in-between that doesn't fit in the story howsoever. willprobably delete later. im just hungry :(

Victor's taken him out to eat at a traditional Japanese restaurant.

Yurio sits with his feet folded under him, gazing at the plates of raw sushi and steaming udon noodles. The waitress comes over with a pan of grilled salmon a minute after and another man drops off a plate of shiitake mushrooms. There's so much food that Yurio doesn't think it'll ever stop. The restaurant is full of noises and smells that burrow into his head.

Victor comes back from the restroom a moment after, when all the items have arrived on the table and their order's have been ticked off. Yurio has broken his chopsticks and dipped them in soy sauce, but when he tries to pick something up he puts it down again. Victor gulps down a mouthful of miso soup before noticing that the sickly look on Yurio's face, since they'd arrived, has gotten worse. Victor had received a message past midnight yesterday from Yurio's mother:  _he hasn't been eating much. An apple or two a day, some milk. I don't know what to do._

Victor isn't sure either. He'd thought that maybe a change of taste, some kind of foreign cuisine, would bring his appetite back. But it's clearly not.

"Something wrong?" Victor asks, tentatively putting the soup down.

Yurio snaps out of his trans, tearing his gaze away from the mountain of food. He makes himself look at Victor, even smile a little. It comes out lopsided, craggy. "No. I'm just not hungry."

People usually say that _before_ getting in a restaurant. Victor has only opened his mouth when Yurio excuses himself from the table. Yurio hears his own stomach growl and it's a hundred times louder than the music playing in the background, just as long and endless. He leaves the restaurant to get some air and the staff hollers some Japanese greeting after him, as if they're trying to chase him out.

 _I'm starving,_ Yurio thinks. He feels so weak that his knees are buckling beneath him and it feels like he's going to retch- but what is there to retch? Stomach acid? Yurio drifts into a nearby convenience store in case Victor decides to chase after him. But all around him are potato chips, instant pizza and the smell of honey-glazed hot dogs wafting from a grilling machine. Yurio closes his eyes and tries to tune it out; his stomach just growls more, angrier than ever. He drags himself along the aisles and picks out an apple from the fruit department, staring at it like his worst enemy.


	5. Chapter 5

His mother’s concern grows.

Yuri himself shrinks, literally. If there hadn’t been anything to his slight frame before, there’s even less now. Sometimes on the rink, when he’s doing a particularly intense routine, the sweat drenches through his clothes and he can feel his own ribs with each breath, pointing outwards, trying to break out of his body. Yakov notices this at one point and calls him off the ice—good timing. Black spots had begun to pinprick his vision and his hands had been numb for too long.

Yakov, Victor and Yuri’s mother gather that night while Yuri lies in bed, several blankets curled around him. Their chatters are soft, occasional footsteps light against the wooden boards. He hears them indistinctly through his window, open to just a gap. Any more of the breeze and he’s sure he’ll turn into a shard of ice. Yuri murmurs the name of his cat, pleading for warm company, no judgement. But she’s not around for some reason and Yuri doesn’t think it’s a good idea to stand and look around.

The next day Yuri is still alive, miraculously. On the bedside table is a tray occupied by a bowl of steaming oatmeal, more water than oat, slightly sweetened with chunks of berries still on the surface. A glass of apple juice, hand-squeezed from the look of the thick suspension. Diluted, too. He finds it in himself to be grateful that his mother doesn’t concoct eggs and bacon, sausages, those terrible things he used to shove in his mouth with such ease.

Yuri reaches out to touch the side of the glass, vapors slicking his finger. He crawls up, lies with his back to his pillow and lifts the glass to his mouth. Licks his cracked lips once, twice, and stares at the swirl. The apple globs stare back at him. Yuri puts the glass down and slides under his blankets.  
  


* * *

 

Later that day Yuri is told that he can’t return to the ice rink. At least Yakov had the decency to break this news by himself. Yuri is mildly surprised that he’s okay with this but he figures, having almost fallen over while attempting to head down the stairs that morning, that the rigor of ice-skating wasn’t something he was up to anyway. Victor appears from the living room as a means of emotional support, but Yuri doesn’t know if it’s support for him or Yakov. He’s never seen the old man so solemn before.

When they’re at the doorway a little later, Victor the last to leave, he finally asks.

“Yuri, when was the last time you had food?”

Yuri, bundled in three jackets and pressed against the wall to avoid the cold air outside, curls in on himself. His mouth sneaks under his scarf, beneath sight. And for all their friendship is worth he whispers, gently, “Three days.”

This isn’t strictly true. He’s had some tea to help him sleep. Chocolate laxatives. He basks in the pains and aches they cause him without him having to commit any form of exertion. The starvation is killing him, he realizes, rather stupidly down the line. But he loves it.

Victor takes a sharp breath. Exhales, more quietly.

“Okay. I’ll be back tonight. Call me if you feel faint, or if you need anything.”

Victor takes a few steps down the hallway of the apartment. Then he swivels around, kneels down in front of Yuri. “I trust you know how this is going to end? If you keep going like this.”

Yuri turns away. Tears prickle his eyes but he refuses to let them show. “Yes, I do. I do.”

He’s relieved when Victor leaves. But the tears begin to fall and they don’t stop, not for a long time after.

There’s not much to do around the house. His mother has taken the day off to take care of Yuri but, though it’s always just been them and his grandpa, they’ve never known each other quite well. Yuri has taken from his mother—secrets behind each word, and their similarity pulls them apart. His mother sits him down so they can talk honestly about the matter but she ends up drifting around the house, fretting over nonexistent household chores. Yuri is reluctant to move from the kitchen table. His body is going through one of those periods when it suddenly weighs a submarine and Yuri can feel himself sinking, his vision swimming, numbness all over.

All he can do is breathe. Shallow, quick breaths. He knows he has to do something about this; Victor’s threat had been unnecessary. When the moment is over, Yuri drags himself off the chair to grab a container of peanut butter and a spoon. Mayver’s used to be his favorite. Yuri unwinds the lid with great difficulty and shoves the spoon in, digging a generous heap of the thing, and jams it in his mouth like cough syrup. The butter sticks to his teeth and the roof of his mouth but he chews and swallows, chews and swallows, and feels blood in his body again, circulating.

He’s alive. He thinks he might puke it out later, but for now, he’s alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the "hunger" games begin, *snort*  
> this story has absolutely no direction whatsoever, but here ya go
> 
> PS random q if anyone would be so kind as to help me out- does anyone out there with an ED feel like it's so much easier to feel bloated? Like eating just a little more than usual makes you uncomfortably full? Inbox or comments would be welcome, thanks :)


	6. Chapter 6

“Where are you headed?”

“Run,” Yuri answers, slipping socked feet into shoes. He realized a while ago that his pro-racing compression sleeves are slightly looser than before. Along with a new skating costume, they had costed his mother a hefty chunk of her salary. That was a few months after his grandfather died, on his birthday, mirthless and dry though it lifted his spirits a little to see the running aids he’d been eyeing.

She pauses, silent for a moment. “Don’t go off too far.”

“Yeah,” Yuri replies, but he’s already halfway through the door.

 

So he’s gained a little weight back. Victor had brought in a giant tub of tasteless whey protein meant for heavy weightlifters, that when dissolved in water disappear like thin air. Little by little Yuri has been gaining a bit more strength though oft-times his knees are still wobbly and spells of dizziness subdue him. His feet and hands are almost always numb, especially when he runs; the protein is enough to sustain him, but not with the nutrients and minerals he needs. A surface cut takes almost two weeks to heal—Yuri still angles a blade at his stomach occasionally, but he fears that one slip-up will drench him in a pool of his own blood.

Yuri’s had some pear slices for breakfast. The days have passed at an odd pace: blink, it’s May, blink again, it’s July. Almost two months of being off the ice and Yuri doesn’t know if he’ll ever be as good as he was before. If he’ll ever amount to anything, if he’ll ever help pay his mother’s bills and debts. He certainly doesn’t do well enough at school to be anything academically. The thoughts whirl in his mind as he starts off at a jog in the dim morning light, breathing in the exhaust of vehicles already out-and-about, huffing and honking. He doesn’t try to go fast. He’s too tired for that.

Although it’s inconclusive, Yuri’s been down with a lot of things these days. If he isn’t running then his nose is, and the slightest indication of bad weather means he’s not going to get any vitamin D. The worst days are when he feels so sick that he binges, shoving protein bar after protein bar down his throat, chugging on electrolytes and other junk he used to take like he was following the book of psalms. It’s not even that much food, really—a bite or two, banana, chocolate fudge. But it feels to him that he’s eating the entire world and his stomach hurts so, so bad afterwards.

He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t purge. Anything but that. Yuri crawls up from the floor carrying three hundred pregnant women in his belly. He reaches for his phone to dial a familiar number.

“Victor, Victor I need you to take me to the hospital.”

His voice turns Victor’s guts to ice. “Yuri? Yuri, what’s happened?”

“Too much. I ate too much. I’m going to—“

“I’m on my way,” Victor says. He doesn’t hang up but Yuri can tell from the distant shouting that Victor’s coming to save him and maybe, just maybe, he won’t have to labor with his head in the toilet bowl.

When Victor arrives Yuri is slumped on the ground, the mess of wrappers and foils tossed a distance away. Victor helps him up and supports him all the way to his car where he drives away, face bleached as he watches Yuri try to hold everything in, the shrinking boy’s palm shut tight around his own neck.

 

At the hospital, the pair attract more than a few odd glances. Victor rushes him to the ER despite the nasty looks of others and when a nurse comes up to him, apologizing that Yuri’s condition isn’t serious enough to warrant ER and that they’ve to line up at the inpatient, Victor absolutely and truly explodes. Even in Yuri’s stupor he can’t help but be aware of Victor ferocity, like a slumbering monster awakened at last. The poor nurse turns to his colleagues and eventually they manage to arrange a doctor for him.

“Breathe,” she tells him. “Look at me and breathe.”

“No, I can’t,” Yuri chokes. He thinks he’s going to puke it all out when the doctor strokes the small of his back and makes him close his eyes and think of another time. A better time.

So Yuri goes back to when his grandpa was alive, when he’d sunk his teeth into bun after bun of piroshky and they’d share little sweets Yuri brought back from overseas training. Between the both of them, the pineapple-berry fusion from his time in Alaska had been unanimously declared as nectar of the Gods.

It’s a while after when Yuri’s calm. Victor and his doctor are speaking outside while he sits with his head in his arms, forehead pressed against the cool table. When they return to the room, Yuri is told by his doctor that she’ll have to have his weight registered. Yuri almost breaks down at this; Victor looks at him with uncertain sympathy.

In the end Yuri refuses to know what the scales say. His eyes are shut during the whole ordeal and afterwards, in the grey silence after his doctor has written up her notes, she asks him a series of questions that are answered with a stony expression, devoid of a single twitch of his facial muscles. She tells him she’s going to have to admit him for a few days while arranging a new therapist, perhaps group therapy as he’s never tried that before.

The hospital gown that Yuri puts on is cold. It’s like he’s draping it over air than his own body.

Victor stays for a while that night. He means to call the few people left in Yuri’s life who care for him but Yuri places his bony fingers atop Victor’s hand and shakes his head, a silent plea in his eyes.

“Enough,” Yuri whispers. He doesn’t want anyone to know, not even his mother. All of this sorrow has worn him down to a husk; he doesn’t need more pain from his the people he cares about.

Victor sighs. Combs through the mess of his bangs. His fingers curl around his phone. “Enough.”

It’s a question and a lie.

“Just be here for a little,” Yuri whispers. He doesn’t move from his position on the bed, still finding it difficult to maneuver his body. The doctor had promised him that it would go away and that it was all in his mind, this distortion of himself. “I’m sorry you had to bring me here. That you’re here at all. If we’d never met—“

Victor bites his lower lip. It’s such an odd gesture from him that Yuri forgets what he’d been about to say. And then in a moment Victor is slumped over his hospital bed, muttering incoherently. Yuri can hear him sniffling but he gets up, there’s not a tear on his face, not a sign that he’d cried at all.


	7. Chapter 7

Yuri recalls when there were good days. Days when he felt like he was recovering, whatever that meant. When his knees didn't wobble and he didn't feel like fainting each time he stood. Yuri approached his ED predictably; each good day was an "oh, okay."

He thinks he would've changed his angle had he known the situation would escalate this far. Bulimia had been a dangerous stint for a while, but it was tearing his throat in half and he quite preferred the slow burn of starving himself, glorifying each hour he went without food or water. The latter had seemed safer for him at the time, as far as keeping it secret was concerned. Now, with his mother sleeping in the couch next to his hospital bed, it's clear he's made another error.

She knows about his cuts, too. When he was changing gowns and she walked in with an old Nintendo, rummaged from their storeroom, and Yuri turned to reveal the dozens of slits like the eyes of a swarm of vipers across his stomach. This, coupled with his ribs sticking out like fish gills and his sallow skin that had lost its ability to flush, almost made her retch on the spot. He didn't get the big deal, though he felt bad nonetheless. His mom tell Yakov, naturally, who tells Victor, naturally. Victor had spoken to him on the phone and their conversation had gone something like this, stripped of all pretense, drier than the Sahara desert:

"I heard you cut yourself?"

"Yeah. Just a bit."

"Your mother described them as 'a thousand shark bites'."

"Eh," Yuri had begun searching through a plastic bag for something sharp, just in case he needed it badly enough. It was one coping mechanism or the other, and at least with the cutting, he didn't think he'd do any permanent damage. The only object that got close was a plastic fork. He ran in across the back of his arm. "You know how mothers are."

It hits Yuri in the preceding silence that he'd overheard a conversation in the changing rooms about Victor's parents, something about physical abuse and a shady past that Victor tries not to talk about.

"Can we trust you to be there alone?"

It's not like Yuri can do anything to himself anymore, not unless he really tries. He can see a couple...creative weapons around, but at this point he just sort of wants to lie down forever and not have to think about anything.

"I called you the last time, didn't I?"

Victor doesn't answer for another time. Yuri checks to see that he's still on the line.

"I'm leaving."

The words strike him, a cold dagger to the back. The world tilts. Yuri's grip on the fork tightens.

"To the U.S. For Skate America."

He's been training for this for a long time. Yuri is aware, of course. But it doesn't make it any easier for him to swallow back a sharp _fuck you_ , to sit his bones on the bed and breathe out, his hands trembling,

"Okay."

Yuri ends the call. He flops backwards and stares at the fluorescent light, feeling the waves of shit roll over him until he's buried, fully, into the sand, and he would hurt himself but honestly he's too tired to.

* * *

 

He doesn't cry or anything. He's just numb to it all, this constant throttling of his mind, his body, everything. He doesn't mention it to his mother or the old friend who comes to visit; an admirer. She's a sweet girl with long blonde locks and nutmeg eyes, and although he had initially rejected her visitation (his mother let her in), it was nice, talking idly about the damn rainy weather these days, whether wrinkly toes mean you'd make a good swimmer. She stays for an hour or two after Yuri's mother leaves for work and when she asks for his contacts, he scribbles a random set of numbers, and asks that the receptionist turn her away if she visits again.

Victor's flight is in three days. Yuri is vandalizing the bedside table when Victor knocks on the door; he doesn't need to look to know that it's him. Soft raps, like he actually cares if he's allowed to enter. It's uncharacteristic of Victor's flighty exuberance.

"Come in," Yuri snarls, inking the outlines of a caricature tiger, wrapped upon a branch like it's scared it'll fall. He thinks briefly of his cat and how she's doing at home, whether she's been having the time of her life these days without him around.

Victor sits next to him. He opens his mouth in preparation for a soliloquy, a speech that he'd tossed over in his head until the words jumbled and coalesced into one thing, one deeply felt apology.

"Buy candy for me."

Yuri is still doodling.

He tells Victor about how he used to hoard foreign treats and share them with his grandpa in his beetle. A crooked smile forms on Victor's face as he listens, though his fingernails and knuckles remain alabaster with tension.

Eventually, Yuri stops doodling. He turns to face Victor and he says, truthfully, "I forgive you. Really."

Victor does tear up this time. He embraces Yuri's slender, hard frame and Yuri folds into his cold warmth.


	8. Chapter 8

Hello everyone!

This is a note that the fic is officially discontinued. I only wish to say one thing to you guys out there: if you're suffering from an ED, get help.

Seriously. This is me looking back at my own journey with restrictive dieting in the last six months. Reading/writing these fanfics actually made things worse for me.

There are repercussions to what you're doing. I'm sorry if you've been bullied into this. But it's  _so_ not worth it.

I'm on four meds and supplements, showing abnormal results for a recent blood test and always carry antacid wherever I go. Eating has become physically painful with the intensity of bloating/ burping/ flatulence/ everything. I can't consume bananas (the saddest shit ever tbh), dairy milk, anything with the barest tinge of oil or even too much vege without my stomach sticking out like I'm eight month's pregnant.

I wasn't even anorexic or bulimic or anything. I was just trying to lose weight. And now I have. But if I could go back to when it started, I would fucking slap the shit out of my dumbass self.

SO, moral of the story, I shall be writing more body positive fiction from now on, and really hope some of you out there will take a step back for a moment and think about what you're doing. It's your body and your life. Fuck everyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> s le ep...


End file.
